


Without Love No Happiness

by ThamesNymph



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-23 20:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20895620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThamesNymph/pseuds/ThamesNymph
Summary: There are only two being on earth who find the writings of John Milton pornographic. They have a detailed discussion about this. (Aziraphale and Crowley finally, with the help of some poetry, manage to admit that they are in love)





	Without Love No Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, the idea behind this is 'what if Milton's description of angels making love in _Paradise Lost_ is basically like pornography for angels/demons'.

Aziraphale shifted guiltily and looked around to reassure himself that the bookshop was indeed deserted. He didn’t often read things that made him feel this excited, this full of longing and desire. Furtively, he moved the book so that its cover could not be seen, even though he knew that it would attract no interest or attention, even if a human were irritating enough to walk in. He lowered his eyes back to the text and his guilt and paranoia was immediately overcome by absorption. Which was why he didn’t notice Crowley swagger into the shop as if he owned the place until the demon was yelling, ‘Hey, Aziraphale!’ at a volume totally unsuited to the cosy hush of old books. 

Aziraphale started, hastily slammed the book shut so hard that half the papers on his desk fell onto his lap and the floor, and attempted to shove the book out of sight. Crowley was about the last person (or person-shaped entity) he needed to see right now. Probably because he was the person he most wanted to see, and who had just been featuring in some thoughts of Aziraphale’s that he most certainly did not want to share with the demon.

‘Oh, Crowley, um… dear boy…’ he stammered, lost between irritation at Crowley’s untimely entrance, his usual happiness on seeing him, and his guilty feeling that Crowley might somehow read his recent thoughts on his face.

‘Watcha reading?’ Crowley asked, draping himself over the desk and tilting his head to peer at the title of Aziraphale’s book.

‘Nothing – I – I mean, what does it matter? You don’t read, anyways!’

‘Oh, I read _sometimes_. You just looked so interested, I wanted to see what it was.’

‘It’s nothing – uh – why don’t we… go get some coffee? Yes, coffee!’ Aziraphale half-blabbered, strategically manoeuvring himself to screen the book from Crowley’s gaze.

Crowley pushed his sunglasses down his nose and squinted intently at Aziraphale through his slit-pupiled, yellow eyes.

‘Angel, are you… _blushing_?’ he asked.

‘No!’ Aziraphale exclaimed, feeling himself no longer simply blushing, but going completely crimson. ‘I just – I’m tired, it’s a busy day!’ he invented desperately.

Crowley looked pointed around the bookshop over the top of his sunglasses. Not a customer in sight.

‘If this is a busy day, a mausoleum would really stress you out,’ he commented. ‘Now, come on, what’s this book?’

‘It’s nothing interesting, really,’ Aziraphale protested.

‘Has anybody ever told you that you’re the world’s worst liar? I mean, I guess it comes built in, angels aren’t supposed to tell lies and all, but still, I bet Gabriel is a better liar than you. And I know Michael must be and – ‘

‘Alright, alright!’ Aziraphale exclaimed, realising that Crowley wasn’t going to let it go and giving in. ‘Here,’ and he thrust the book towards Crowley.

‘_Paradise Lost_?’ Crowley said, in a tone of half incredulity, half disgust, holding the book at arm’s length, as if it smelled particularly unpleasant. ‘Never read it, I don’t need a rerun of Heaven versus Hell on Channel 1667, thanks very much. Don’t think much of Milton anyways, I fell asleep two paragraphs into ‘Aeropagitica’, thought, mind you, fun word to say, Aero-pa-gi-ti-ca… So, what’s in this that’s making you blush?’

‘It is _not_ making me blush!’

‘Alright, alright, what’s this boring old fart written that’s making you look so interested?’

‘Milton is _not_ boring!’ Aziraphale-the-irrepressible-literature-enthusiast flamed up, and, forgetting all about his embarrassment in his eagerness to defend the poet, he seized the book back from Crowley, and began flicking through it until the found the section he had just been reading.

‘Here, look at that, there,’ he said, pushing it back to the demon, and pointing.

In the section he indicated, Adam and Eve, still unfallen, are visited by an angel in Eden, and Adam asks the angel,

_Love not the heav’nly Spirits, and how thir Love_  
_Express they, by looks onely, or do this mix_  
_Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?_

_ __ _

__

And the angel responds,

_Let it suffice thee that thou know’st_  
_Us happie, and without Love no happiness._  
_Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy’st_  
_(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy_  
_In eminence, and obstacle find none_  
_Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs:_  
_Easier than Air with Air, if Spirits embrace,_  
_Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure_  
_Desiring; nor restrain’d conveyance need_  
_As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul._  
_But I can now no more…_ [1]

__

__

Crowley whistled.

‘Well,’ he said, eyebrows raised, and an unmistakable trail of pink mounting to his own cheeks.

‘Who’s blushing now?’ Aziraphale asked, in that clipped, infuriating tone which was so decidedly un-angelic.

‘Angel,’ Crowley snapped, ‘you give me practically hardcore porn, and expect me to just – ‘ he gestured vaguely, ‘be alright?!’

‘I know,’ Aziraphale exclaimed, ‘this sort of thing ought to be censored!’

‘Not really,’ Crowley said. ‘There are only two beings on earth this could effect. You couldn’t expect the censors to take supernatural forces into consideration, even in the seventeenth century.’

‘Yes, I suppose… Wait!’ Aziraphale cried, making Crowley jump. ‘What do you mean, only two?’

‘Well, are you seeing a lot of other angels or demons around?’

‘No, I meant – ‘ Aziraphale broke off, going red all over again, then continuing. ‘I thought it was just me. I thought you wouldn’t be – effected. By this sort of thing.’

Crowley stared at him. 

‘I thought that demons couldn’t… you know… do that anymore. After they Fall.’

‘What do you think they’re doing down there, having _human sex_?’ Crowley asked, incredulously. ‘We’re still angels, even if we’re Fallen ones.’

‘Well, I didn’t know!’ Aziraphale cried defensively.

‘You could’ve asked!’

‘It’s not exactly the sort of thing one asks!’

There was a very long, embarrassed silence, during which Aziraphale and Crowley endeavoured to look at anything rather than one another.

‘So…’ Aziraphale managed, in a wavering voice, ‘do you do that sort of thing much? Down there?’

‘No!’ Crowley sounded equal parts disgusted and outraged. ‘You’ve seen what they’re like down there! Do you really see me getting it on with Ligur and his creepy little lizard… toad… thing?’ he waved vaguely around his head.

Aziraphale shook his head.

‘And… what about you?’ asked Crowley. ‘Up there?’

‘Oh, I don’t like my ah… colleagues any more than you do yours. Besides,’ he looked suddenly up at Crowley, with a sort of desperate daring shining out of his eyes, ‘the only being I really wanted to… make love with… isn’t there.’

‘Oh?’ said Crowley, and his voice seemed to have suddenly gone all hoarse and choked and utterly beyond his control. ‘Where… is this being, then?’

‘Right in front of me,’ Aziraphale whispered.

There was a moment of silence, but this time of the unbearably tense variety.

Then Crowley slammed his fist down on the table and shouted, ‘You could have said something!!’

‘Well, I – I didn’t want to upset you. I thought that you couldn’t do that because you’re a demon, and it would remind you of being an angel and make you… upset. I didn’t want that.’

Crowley stared at him.

‘Angel,’ he said, very distinctly and with forced calm, ‘are you telling me that you’ve wanted us to make love for six thousand years, but you didn’t say anything because it might _upset_ me?!’

‘Well… yes!’

Crowley sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands in a mixture of despair and horrified amusement.

‘So when we switched bodies, did you feel it too?’ Aziraphale asked.

‘_Feel it_? Angel, it was the best moment of my existence!’

‘The why didn’t _you_ say anything?’ Aziraphale demanded.

‘Because I thought you wouldn’t want to… with a demon…’ mumbled Crowley.

‘Oh my,’ Aziraphale moaned. ‘We are really…’

‘Ineffably stupid.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Well,’ said Crowley, leaping to his feet, ‘close up the shop.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Aziraphale, we’ve got six thousand years of otherworldly love to catch up on! Do you think I’m going to wait another five seconds?!’

‘Right,’ Aziraphale said, and the sign on the door flipped around to ‘CLOSED’.

‘Angel,’ Crowley said suddenly, ‘that bit in _Paradise Lost_, where the angel says to Adam "Let it suffice thee" and “I can now no more”… that sounds to me an awful lot like “it’s ineffable”. Did you, by any chance, have a chat with good old Milton?’

‘Well, I might have done,’ Aziraphale admitted, ‘but I had no idea that he would describe everything quite so… explicitly.’

As they were heading for the stairs up to Aziraphale’s flat, he suddenly stopped.

‘Wait, I’m not going to do anything until you take back what you said about Milton being boring!’

‘Angel, believe me, from now on, he’s my favourite poet.’

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Basically, if you're not used to 17th century nonsense, Adam asks the angel, 'so, do angels have sex?' and the angel says 'they do but it's basically on a different plane and I'm not about to explain'. Neither I nor anyone else has a very clear idea of what Milton actually meant in this description, there are literally hundreds of scholarly articles arguing exactly what sort of angelic sex Milton was imagining, and I know someone who was writing an MA thesis on angelic bodies in early modern literature, so basically, no one knows what's going on.


End file.
